House Democrats Compiling Super Trade Bill -- Gop Cries Politics

May 6, 1986|By KNT News Service

WASHINGTON — House Democrats, looking toward this fall's elections and voter concerns about record trade deficits, hope to combine a host of legislative proposals into a Super Trade Bill and file the measure as early as next week.

''This will be the most sweeping trade legislation to move through the House,'' said Rep. Don Bonker, D-Wash., who led a trade task force that set guidelines for Democrat-controlled committees to follow.

Democrats say their plan is to attack problems shared by many American companies, not to solve specific complaints. But House Republicans say the intent of the bill is to blame President Reagan and the GOP for the nation's soaring trade deficit, which topped $148 billion in 1985, and to reap a political harvest in this year's elections.

''The Democratic leadership is deliberately bringing to the floor a bill designed never to become law but only to serve as political ammunition in the November election,'' said Minority Leader Robert Michel, R-Ill.

Proposals likely to find their way into the final package include Ways and Means Committee legislation to ''beef up the trade remedy laws'' as Bonker put it, by forcing the president to retaliate against ''unfair'' foreign competition and by shifting some trade decisions to the U.S. trade representative to keep them from being ''politicized'' by White House and State Department concerns over foreign relations.

Recommendations could include moves to stabilize currency exchange rates to a restructuring of the Agriculture Department's international trade bureaucracy.